Dara, the frontman of Bangaranga, has revealed that he nearly quit Eurovision not once, but twice before securing victory. This confession, dripping with the very millennial angst that defines our age, is a telling symptom of a broader cultural malaise. In the Victorian era, one did not 'nearly quit' the Grand Tour.
One soldiered on, fortifying the empire, as it were. Today, we fetishise the brink of collapse, the near-miss, the almost-capitulation. It is the intellectual equivalent of a participation trophy.
Dara's hesitation is not a mark of humility but a sign of the times: we have become a civilisation of quitters, forever flirting with the abyss, titillated by our own potential for surrender. The Eurovision stage, once a pantheon of kitsch nationalism, has become a therapy couch. And we are all the poorer for it.
